Unless we stopped ourselves. If we do things that are unsustainable, the damage accumulates ultimately to a point where the whole system collapses. Our predators had been eliminated. Two legendary Go players, once student and master, face victory and defeat as they inevitably come face to face as rivals. A speed of change that exceeds any in the last 10,000 years. Many people regarded it as the most costly in the history of mankind. 1978 WORLD POPULATION: 4.3 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 335 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 55%. As carbon release accelerates, the ocean will continue to absorb its share of this. In such places, huge shoals of fish gather. But Ive had unbelievable luck and good fortune. Pripyat is situated in Ukraine, and was built by the Soviet Union in the 1970s. But lines blur when a key informant makes a big ask. And yet, this is what weve been turning this dizzying diversity into. After all, theres plenty of it. Every other species on Earth reaches a maximum population after a time. Today, forests cover half of Costa Rica. Attenborough says, We run life on the planet to meet our own ends.. There are something like 4,000 million of us today, and weve reached this position with meteoric speed. Uploaded by No one has lived here since. The sooner it happens, the easier it makes everything else we have to do. In this time-jumping dramedy, a workaholic who's always in a rush now wants life to slow down when he finds himself leaping ahead a year every few hours. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet - Transcript October 14, 2020 David Attenborough has seen more of the natural world than any other. The ocean has long since become unable to absorb all the excess heat caused by our activities. There is no international law at the moment to stop it. Farms take up a combined space the size of North America, South America, and Australia combined, with devastating greenhouse gas emissions. People had never seen pangolins before on television. Life in Pripyat continued comfortably until 26 April 1986, when reactor number 4 at Chernobyl exploded. And a few years later, that idea became obvious to everyone. A marked change in atmospheric carbon has always been incompatible with a stable earth. I'm quite sure. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Half of the fertile land on Earth is currently farmed, and it's often overgrazed, over-sprayed with pesticides, and denuded of topsoil. Huge herds on the plains have kept the grasslands rich and productive by fertilizing the soils. One of the greatest films ever made, The Sorrow and The Pity is a contribution to history, to social psychology, to anthropology, and to art. SIMON: I feel the need to take up some of the very practical points that you raise in this book. The problem is that our fishing fleets are just as good at finding those hot spots as are the fish. We have to do our best. [whales singing] Their mournful songs were the key to transforming peoples opinions about them. As much now as I did when I was a boy. Fishing is worlds greatest wild harvest. As Attenborough says: 'We regard the Earth as our planet, run by mankind for mankind.' Every one has a critical role to play. Whole habitats would soon start to disappear. Forests are a fundamental component of our planets recovery. Palau is a Pacific Island nation reliant on its coral reefs for fish and tourism. The best time of our lives. These rivers are also dumping grounds for chemicals and pesticides, destroying birds and freshwater fish. The pace of change was getting faster and faster. Its been staring us in the face all along. This unique feature documentary is his witness statement. When I filmed with the mountain gorillas, there were only 300 left in a remote jungle in Central Africa. Attenborough is now 94, and throughout his long life, has watched the natural world wither before his eyes. 24FramesArchives Half of the fertile land on earth is now farmland. By damming, polluting, and over-extracting rivers and lakes, weve reduced the size of freshwater populations by over 80%. 75% of all species were wiped out. Ocean life was also unravelling in the shallows. Earth could be 4 degrees Celsius warmer, making farming in many areas impossible. The herrings have disappeared from the North Sea. However, stressed polyps dispose of their algae partners, leading them to bleach and turn into skeletons. In truth, I couldnt imagine living my life in any other way. After the death of their father, two half-brothers find themselves on opposite sides of an escalating conflict with tragic consequences. In 1998, a Blue Planet film crew stumbled on an event little known at the time. Many new plant-based foods are on the market, and in the future, biotechnology may be able to use microorganisms to provide us with proteins. Required fields are marked *. If there is no corner of the oceans which is safe from fishing vessels of one kind or another, we are heading for total elimination of the edible fish from the sea. We all need to change our mindset, and we need to implement a new order right now. There is a double incentive to cut down forests. And because we would be then dedicated to raising plants, we could increase the yield of this land substantially. Weve managed to travel by boat to islands that were impossible to get to historically because they were permanently locked in the ice. It was going to bring everything we had ever dreamed of. The longer they have to wait for the ice to return, the more they use up their fat supplies. We need to rediscover how to be sustainable. We have such a fascination for wildlife, but wild animals make up only 4% of the mammals on Earth. Great numbers of species disappear and are suddenly replaced by a few. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Why wouldnt we want to do these things? Synopsis. As a child, Attenborough enjoyed studying fossils. In the process, they also provide us with simple solutions to saving our planet before it is too late. Im talking about the loss of our planets wild places, its biodiversity. I advocate that there should be zones, parts of the ocean where they should be absolutely sacrosanct, where, in fact, populations of fish can build up and actually from that, colonize the rest of the seas that we've stripped. We are ultimately bound by and reliant upon the finite natural world about us. Our closest relatives. If we all had a largely plant-based diet, we would need only half the land we use at the moment. But scientists started to discover that in many cases where bleaching occurred, the ocean was warming. The Plant-Based Gut Health Program for Losing Weight, Restoring Your Health, and Optimizing Your Microbiome, Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, An Introductory Guide to Deeper States of Meditation, Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun, 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind. The pace of progress was unlike anything to be found in the fossil record. [Attenborough] By working hard to raise people out of poverty, giving all access to healthcare, and enabling girls in particular to stay in school as long as possible, we can make it peak sooner and at a lower level. Small creatures called polyps, create reefs by building walls of calcium carbonate to protect their tiny forms, while the fantastic colors of a coral reef come from the algae in their tissues. My first visit to East Africa was in 1960. Since the Second World War, what's known as the "Great Acceleration" has brought us many progressive things, as our GDPs indicate. In the past, animals had to develop some physical ability to change their lives. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet 2020 | Maturity rating: PG | 1h 23m | Science & Nature Documentaries A broadcaster recounts his life, and the evolutionary history of life on Earth, to grieve the loss of wild places and offer a vision for the future. Many of the millions of species in the forest exist in small numbers. But its possible to slow, even to stop population growth well before it reaches that point. [reindeer grunting] [birds hooting] [buffalo snorting] [birds cawing] [elephants trumpeting]. Against the backdrop of the WWII battle known as Hitler's first defeat, a Norwegian soldier returns home and learns a shocking truth about his wife. Sir David Attenborough was 28-years-old when he convinced his bosses at the BBC to let him travel the world and document his explorations. That non-human world is gone. . It was a very different world back then. By and large, its a story of slow, steady change. Der Emmy-gekrnte Naturforscher David Attenborough (Unser Planet", Planet Erde II") hat einen Plan fr die Zukunft. And the songs have distinct themes and variations which evolve over time. [birds chirping] Just imagine if we achieve this on a global scale. on October 24, 2021. From a person that has seen just how quickly our natural world has disappeared in his own lifetime, at the present rate how little time could be left, what solutions, course to take. [NASA technician] Five, four, three, two one, zero. 2020 | Maturity Rating: 7+ | 1h 23m | Science & Nature Docs. Those forests and plains and seas were already emptying. To start to thrive. As we improve our approach to farming, well start to reverse the land-grab that weve been pursuing ever since we began to farm, which is essential because we have an urgent need for all that free land. Even as some of us were setting foot on the moon, others were still leading such a life in the most remote parts of the planet. Half a million gazelle. Whales were being slaughtered by fleets of industrial whaling ships in the 1970s. The nearby nuclear power station of Chernobyl exploded. We can solve the problems we now face by embracing this reality. The future was going to be exciting. Oil and gas companies represent the largest businesses globally, heavy industry uses fossil fuels, and there's a hefty stock market investment in these companies. In one act, this would transform the open ocean from a place exhausted by subsidized fishing fleets to a wilderness that will help us all in our efforts to combat climate change. Each generation able to develop and progress only because the living world could be relied upon to deliver us the conditions we needed. And the extent of the polar ice has been critical, reflecting sunlight back off its white surface, cooling the whole earth. Just listen to this. You can be in one spot on the Serengeti, and the place is totally empty of animals, and then, the next morning [bellowing] one million wildebeest. 2020 WORLD POPULATION: 7.8 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 415 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 35%, Science predicts that were I born today, I would be witness to the following. I don't think anybody has actually said that they were prepared for it, either. In this future, we discover ways to benefit from our land that help, rather than hinder, wilderness. So, how do we recognize critical thresholds? His passion for protecting diverse wildlife, and reclaiming our wilderness is palpable, and A Life on Our Planet is his "witness statement." Scientists call it the Holocene. In previous events, it had taken volcanic activity up to one million years to dredge up enough carbon from within the earth to trigger a catastrophe. This truth defined the life we led in our pre-history, the time before farming and civilization. And the quickest and most effective way to do that is for us to change our diet. Within 20 years, renewables are predicted to be the worlds main source of power. A sixth mass extinction event is well underway. Billions of individuals, and millions of kinds of plants and animals [birds chirping] dazzling in their variety and richness. A mass extinction has happened five times in lifes four-billion-year history. [Attenborough] We are facing nothing less than the collapse of the living world. But, there are ways to change direction and alter the doom and gloom we've created. The living world is a unique and spectacular marvel. Throughout the north, frozen soils thaw, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide, accelerating the rate of climate change dramatically. He researched how the Earth had experienced massive eruptions at specific points, destroying many species. The Happy Planet Index measures both an ecological footprint and human well-being component in a country. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. This city in Ukraine was once home to almost 50,000 people.